Infosys experts share their views on how digital is significantly impacting enterprises and consumers by redefining experiences, simplifying processes and pushing collaborative innovation to new levels

Let's do XAAS

There is little point in repeating any rhetoric of current and emerging technologies’ impact on consumers and all the industries and technologists on this planet. Cloud, Big Data, Social, Mobility, APIs, Internet of Things are all beaten well into a pulp in the field of information technology from the oldest, largest conglomerates to the newest of startups whether fintech or healthtech.

There is also a desperate need to build ‘Anything’ or ‘Everything’ as a Service and commoditize within the Enterprise itself. In many of the interactions with clients, it is interesting to hear requirements like ‘Banking as a Service’, ‘Plant (manufacturing) as a Service’, ‘Wholesale as a Service’, ‘Product as a Service’, ‘Assets as a Service’, ‘Marketplace as a Service’, ‘Payments as a Service’, ‘Care as a Service’, ‘Commissions (Brokers & Agents) as a Service’ and so on.

Interestingly building any of these “____as a service” in the Enterprise IT just boils down to very simple strategy, architectures and methodical steps but yes it is never as simple as it sounds and compromises will have to be made on the way.

The thought behind any of the ____ as a Service is simple. Provide enough capabilities to the end users (e.g. ability for business partners to access the formats and APIs to get and also provide the right information, ability for direct customers to access service according to situation anywhere using a mobile app, e.g. for customers of business partners to understand the origin and probably the regulatory requirements of the products sold the business (2nd B in the B2B2C), ability for product managers to concoct new products without raising an IT-project request and ability for agents and brokers to monitor their targets and associated perks with it without contacting any admins). Users should not be bogged down with technologies, processes and associated delays.

Interestingly there is another _AAS - the platform (PAAS) that has to be the foundation to create these new avenues where technology really helps business a step or two forward in this competitive landscape.

Attached are some diagrams on what constitutes a framework for XAAS and any business as a service on top of it.

Comments

Nice post. Reminded me in some ways of "SOA" of the mid 2000s. Many global implementations failed. Byte sized SOA did succeed. Same for XAAS. Self service BI with the right governance in place is a good example of the concept of services properly applied to a business context.